Happy Blogiversary!

One year ago today, sitting at a cramped vanity in my friend Donnella’s hotel room, I made the first post to The Ferris Files. The world of self-publishing has never been the same, if I may say so myself.

Over the last 365 days, The Ferris Files has reported the highs and the lows, from […]

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How to Make Golf a Real Sport

I have long considered golfers a bunch of lazy so-and-sos whose greatest feats are 1) not spilling their lattes when they get out of the electric cart and 2) thwacking a tiny, spring-loaded ball across a giant lawn that has already been mowed for them by a Mexican.

If that passes for “sport,” then we […]

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Having a Ball

Last Thursday I played my first golf game ever. The first tee at the Presidio Golf Course is a doozy, a 362-yard drive that doglegs to the right so hard that you can’t see the green through the trees.

I squared up to the ball – somewhere I heard that’s what you’re supposed to do, […]

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The Peninsula vs. the Peso

I discovered the tip of the Baja Peninsula six years ago, when my friend steered her Jeep off the carretera, down an arroyo and right onto the sand. The ocean tinted green and blue like the Caribbean and invited us to lose our sandals. The beach stood empty. Looking around I saw the land was […]

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An Electrical Disturbance

I hadn’t quite finished pulling in behind the van when from its driver’s seat hopped a woman, a little Filipina in a huge denim shirt and with a band-aid under her left nostril. She wanted a jump.

Photo Credit: jstangroom's flickr page

Sure, I said. Something about her seemed a little strange, but […]

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Not Your Average Bear

This is our local bear.

She has been living in the tree outside my living room window for many years. She comes and goes with the seasons. Every spring my landlord Dan carries an aluminum ladder out to the sidewalk and climbs up to place her in the notch of the tree. In the […]

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My Neighborhood

I reside in San Francisco a few blocks off Geary Street in the middle avenues of the Richmond District. It looks like nothing special, at least to an outsider. Let me tell you about it.

The Richmond’s middle avenues are a place of tight ethnicities and tight purse strings, where Chinese men chat all day […]

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Our Big Fat Brains

Today I helped some friends move a giant pile of firewood from one place to another, and in the process I became a little less alarmed about America becoming so fat and stupid. I “work out” several times a week and I “work hard” at my job, but I don’t spend much time doing what […]

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Laughing with the Lama

“We make the world with our thoughts,” the Dalai Lama said, and I tried to focus on his words. But my eyes were on his hand, which was fishing around inside his robe. The leader of Tibetan Buddhism pulled out a visor, one that matched his maroon robes perfectly. He looked up at the thousands […]

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Vroom!

I am a runner and enjoy running fast, but there’s a certain speed limit to what you can do on two feet. That is why go-kart racing this weekend kind of twirled my Nikes.

Photo Credit: gokartracer.com

I promised this outing to my dad and my brother-in-law, Steve, at Christmas as a manly-men-doing-manly-things […]

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